I’ve said it here before…I firmly believe that you’ve got to do some sort of active, consistent networking!
I’ve mentioned networking and my involvement in our local Le Tip chapter in earlier blog posts. Regardless of whether you join a similar lead generation oriented group, a service organization like Rotary, or even a church, networking with other professionals is an absolute must for the success of your business.
Case in point: I joined Le Tip in March of 2006. We had been in business for 2 years with a failed business model (inadequate pricing, no entry points aka the come one come all approach, and no system to progress people through our business among other mistakes that are all too obvious in hindsight.) In December of 2005 we literally fired 65 group clients and moved to a private training only model (again in hindsight we would have handled that differently…but at that point we were fairly burned out and not making any money, and apparently not thinking as clearly as we could have). Hindsight reverie aside, within 1 month of moving to a private training gym we were grossing more than we had with the 65 group clients (That should seriously highlight the veracity of my statement that our pricing was indeed inadequate!)
I knew that if we were going to turn our business around I needed to do something. Joining Le Tip was a way for me to get our business name in front of a group of professionals week after week and utilize the power of networking.
It took about 3 months for me to get my first lead or “tip”. It was from the President at the time, Lou Maraschiello aka “Lou Mars“. Lou trained with me for about 2 months as a private client and in doing so singlehandedly gave our business a great gift. First, he is a dynamic and charismatic speaker. As president he would make various comments at the meeting about his training with me. He would tell the waitress that “I’d better order the salad, my personal trainer is watching” and other similar comments. Essentially he endorsed me each and every meeting. He came to our warehouse of a gym to train with me and he shared stories with the meeting at large each and every week. His endorsement ultimately led to subsequent “tips” and clients from the group, folks that are still training with us to this day.
Fast forward 3 and a half years to the present. Lou was a professional drummer in his former life and toured with bands that opened for Social Distortion among others. He recently decided to attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Records “drumming marathon by an individual,” a record currently set at 120 hours! And guess what? We are doing his training! And guess what else? The event will take place in our gym beginning January 14th! Local media crews are coming out to our location on Monday to interview us and we will likely see much more of this closer to and during the event! In fact the Guinness Book folks are likely to be filming the event for their media resources.
So, my point: you never know what opportunities will come of relationships you make today.
You can read more about Lou Mars and the event at our norcal blog here and here.
